_Feb. '79._--I saw to-day a sight I had never seen before--and it
amazed, and made me serious; three quite good-looking American men,
of respectable personal presence, two of them young, carrying
chiffonier-bags on their shoulders, and the usual long iron hooks in
their hands, plodding along, their eyes cast down, spying for scraps,
rags, bones, &c.
DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW WORLD
estimated and summ'd-up to-day, having thoroughly justified itself
the past hundred years, (as far as growth, vitality and power are
concern'd,) by severest and most varied trials of peace and war, and
having establish'd itself for good, with all its necessities and
benefits, for time to come, is now to be seriously consider'd also
in its pronounc'd and already developt dangers. While the battle was
raging, and the result suspended, all defections and criticisms were
to be hush'd, and everything bent with vehemence unmitigated toward
the urge of victory. But that victory settled, new responsibilities
advance. I can conceive of no better service in the United States,
henceforth, by democrats of thorough and heart-felt faith, than
boldly exposing the weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions of
democracy. By the unprecedented opening-up of humanity en-masse in the
United States, the last hundred years, under our institutions, not
only the good qualities of the race, but just as much the bad ones,
are prominently brought forward. Man is about the same, in the main,
whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.
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